Chapter XXXVIII: Macgregor Roy

Reivers' first impression was that he was standing in a gigantic stockade. The second that he was on the floor of a great quarry-pit. Then, when the situation grew clear to him, he stood dumfounded.

The camp of Shanty Moir lay in what would have been a solid rock cave but for the lack of a roof. It was an irregular hollow in the strange formation of the Dead Lands, perhaps fifty yards long and thirty yards wide at its greatest breadth. The hollow was surrounded completely by ragged stone walls about fifty feet in height. These walls slanted inward to a startling degree. Thus while the floor of the strange spot was thirty yards wide, the opening above, through which showed the far-away sky, could scarcely have been more than half that width. The brook ran through the middle of the chasm, entering the upper end by a tunnel five feet in height and disappearing in the solid wall of rock at the lower end by a similar opening.

On each side of the narrow stream, and running back to the rock walls, was a floor of smooth river-sand. Beneath an overhanging ledge on the side where Reivers stood were the rude skin fronts of two dugouts. A tin smoke-stack protruded from the larger of the two habitations; the other, which was high enough only to admit a man stooping far over, was merely a flap of hide hanging down from the rock.

On the beach at the other side of the creek a fire burned beneath a great iron pan, the wood smoke filling the chasm with its pungent odour. Behind the fire a series of tunnels ran down in the sand under the cliffs. From the tunnel immediately behind the fire came a thin spiral of sluggish smoke, and Reivers knew that this tunnel was being worked and that the fire was being used to thaw the frozen earth.

A man who resembled Moir on a small scale was at work at the thawing-pan, breaking the hard earth with his fingers and tossing it into a washing-pan at his side. He stood now with a chunk of frozen sand in his hand, and at sight of Reivers and Tillie he tossed the sand recklessly into the air and whooped.

"Ha! Hast done well this time, Shanty," he cried in an accent similar to theirs. "Hast made tuh life endurable. A new horse for me and a woman for 'ee. 'Tis high time. Since Blacky went off and did not come back, and tuh two Indians tried to flee, we've had but one horse to do with. Now wilt have two. Wilt clean up in a hurry now, and live in tuh meanwhile."

Shanty Moir laughed harshly.

"How works tuh old Scot jackass to-day?" he called.

The man across the creek shook his head.

"He's never tuh horse he was when we first put him in harness," he chuckled. "Fell twice in his tracks to-day, he did, and lay there till Joey gave him an inch of tuh prod. Has been a good beastie, the Scot has, Shanty, but 'tis in my mind tuh climate does not 'gree with him. Scarce able to pull his load. In tuh mines at home we knocked such worn beasties in the head and sent them up o' tuh pit."

Moir laughed again.

"Hast a quaint way o' putting things, Tammy," he said. "But I mind when ponies were scarce we used them till they crawled their knees raw. 'Tis plenty o' time to knock old horse-flesh in tuh head when tuh job's done."

They laughed together. Evidently this was a well-liked camp joke.

"'Tis a well-coupled animal 'ee have there, Shanty," said the humourist across the water, with a jerk of the head at Reivers. "Big in tuh bone and solid around tuh withers. Yon squaw is a solid piece, too. Happen they're broke to pull double?"

"Unbroke stock, Tammy," drawled Moir leisurely. "Gentleman, squaw-man, waster. But breaking stock's our specialty, eh, Tammy?"

A muffled shout floated up from the mouth of the smoking pit before Tammy could reply. Instantly there followed a dull moan of pain: Moir and Tommy laughed knowingly.

"Here comes sample of our work," said Tammy, nodding toward the tunnel. "Poor Joey! Has to use tuh prod to start him with each load now."

A grating, shuffling sound now came from the mouth of the tunnel. Following it appeared the head of a man. And Reivers needed only one glance at the emaciated countenance to know that he was looking upon the father of Hattie MacGregor.

"Giddap, Scotch jackass!" roared Moir in great good humour. "Pull it out o' there. That's tuh horse. Pull!"

The man came painfully, an inch at a time, out of the pit, and looked across the creek at Shanty Moir. Behind him there dragged a rough wooden sledge loaded with lumps of earth. The man was hitched to this load by a harness of straps that held his arms helpless against his sides. No strait-jacket ever held its victim more utterly helpless than the contrivance which now held James MacGregor in toils as a beast of burden. A contrivance of straps about the ankles held his legs close together.

So short were the traces by which the sledge was drawn that MacGregor could not have stood upright without having lifted the heavy load a foot or more from the ground. He made no attempt to stand so, but hung half-bowed against the harness, his eyes gleaming through the matted red hair over his brows straight at Shanty Moir.

It was the eyes that drew and held Reivers' attention to the face, rather than to the man's terrible situation. James MacGregor, helpless beast of burden to his tormentors that he was, was not beaten. The same clean-cut nose, mouth and chin that Reivers remembered so well in the daughter were apparent in the father's pain-marked face. The eyes gleamed defiance. And they were wide and grey, Reivers saw, the same as the eyes that haunted him in memory's pictures of the girl who had not feared his glance.

"Shanty Moir," spoke MacGregor in a voice weak but firm, "when the devil made you he cursed his own work. He cursed you as a misbegotten thing not fit for hell. The gut-eating wolverine is a brave beast compared to you. Skunks would run from your company. You think you have done big work. You fool! You cannot rob me of what belongs to me and mine; you cannot kill me. As sure as there is a God in Heaven, He will let me or mine kill you with bare hands."

Moir and his man laughed in weary fashion, as if this speech were old to them, and Reivers was amazed at an impulse within him to throw himself at Shanty Moir's throat. He joined foolishly in the laughter to hide his confusion. What had he to do with such impulses? What business had he having any feeling for the poor enslaved man before him? He had come to Moir's camp for one purpose: to get the gold mined there, to get a new start in life. Was it possible that he was growing weak enough to experience the feeling of pity, the impulse to help the helpless? Nonsense! He laughed loudly. His plan was one in which silly impulses of this nature had no part, and he would go through with it to the end.

"Well brayed, Scots jackass," said the man at the thawing-pan casually. "Now pull tuh load over here. Giddap-pull!"

MacGregor leaned weakly against the harness, but the sledge had lodged and his depleted strength was insufficient to budge it.

"Oh ho! Getting lazy, eh?" came from the tunnel, and a thin-faced man came out, a short stick with a sharp brad in his hands. "Want help, eh? Well, here 'tis," he chuckled, and drove the brad into MacGregor's leg.

Again the strange impulse to leap to the tortured man's rescue, to kill his tormentor without reckoning the price or what might come after, stirred itself in Reivers' breast, and again he joined in the laughter to pass it off.

MacGregor started as the iron entered his flesh and the movement loosened the sledge. With weak, faltering steps he drew the load alongside the fire, where Tammy proceeded to transfer the frozen chunks of earth to the thawing-pan.

"Eh, hah! New cattle?" said the man with the prod when he espied Reivers and Tillie. "Cow and bull."

"Cow--and an old ox, Joey," laughed Moir. "Has even burnt his horns off with hooch, and wilt go well in the harness when he's broke."

"'Tis time," said Joey. "Tuh Scots jackass'll soon drop in his tracks."

"Not until I've paid you out in full, you devils," said MacGregor quietly. "I'll give you an hour of living hell for every prod you've given me, you poor cur."

Joey approached him and unhooked the traces from his harness with an air that told how well he was accustomed to such threats.

"Must call it a day, Shanty," he said, loosening the straps that bound MacGregor's hands so the forearms were free while the upper arms remained bound tightly to his sides. "Old pit's full o' smoke." In bored sort of fashion he kicked MacGregor into the creek. "To your stable, jackass. Day's done."

MacGregor, tripped by the traps about his ankles, fell full length in the water, floundered across, and crawled miserably out of sight behind the skin front of the smaller dugout. Moir and his two henchmen watched him, jeering and laughing. At a sign the two on the other side of the creek came across and drew close to their chief.

"And now, old son," snarled Moir, swinging around on Reivers like a flash, "now, you slick waster--now we'll attend to 'ee."